Brain Exercises

Tuesday

Small change: Spell long words backwards.

Sense: Hearing As different people speak to you throughout the day, cue in to the inflections they use to accent certain words or points. Listen to the words they’re stressing and ask yourself why these inflections are being used.

Critical thinking tool: The Principled Juror Defined: Subject what you hear or read to intellectual due process. According to Professor Howard Gabennesch, this is perhaps the most difficult method of critical thinking because it requires “more integrity, humility, tolerance of uncertainty, and courage than most of us find easy to summon.” Thus, be prepared to admit that you don’t know something, that your experience and intelligence have limits or that a potentially offensive or repulsive notion might have merit.

Wednesday

Small change: Ditch the calculator and do any and all computations in your head.

Sense: Touch When getting out of bed or coming home from work, shut your eyes and feel your way around, relying only on the communication between your mind and your hands.

Critical thinking tool: The Devil’s Advocate Defined: Defend an opposing viewpoint as a means of testing its legitimacy. Playing the devil’s advocate can help you to overcome some long-held but potentially groundless bias or prejudice. It can also improve your intellectual empathy.

Thursday

Small change: Shower/bathe in the dark.

Sense: Taste Pick a recipe composed of mostly foreign ingredients and prepare it. Try choosing something that you’ve never tried but have always been curious about. Maybe you’ve never tried a curry dish, but the aroma has appealed to you.

Critical thinking tool: The Pragmatic Maxim Defined: To get the meaning of any proposed concept, consider the consequences and results if the concept were true; the grand total of these consequences gives you the full meaning of the concept. This is especially good in putting statistics to the test. For example, the promoters of the Live Earth concerts claimed they had 2 billion viewers or nearly 1/3 of the world’s population. Do the math and ask yourself just how plausible this is.

Friday

Small change: Take a different route to work.

Sense: Smell Pick any hour of the day and for that hour, keep a running count in your head of how many different odors and aromas you come across. Pay attention to the primary element in each, and your response to it.

Critical thinking tool: Occam’s Razor Defined: The simplest explanation for most things is usually the wisest one. Also sometimes referred to as the rule of simplicity, the idea is not to make things any harder or more complicated to understand than is necessary. In other words, try to trim the fat from what you hear in an effort to reach conclusions. Albert Einstein is alleged to have said, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

stretch your brain muscle

Aspects of the preceding workout were inspired by the fantastic and original system of Neurobics, created by Dr. Lawrence Katz of Duke University. For a far wider view of the science behind these exercises, check out his site at Neurobics.com.

Skeptics get a bad rap, but skepticism isn’t about believing nothing at all. Stephen Jay Gould called skepticism “the agent of reason against organized irrationalism.” For further insight into critical thinking, check out the book by Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time, as well as the many resources listed at austhink.org/critical.